Today is Nomination Day for the 2017 General Election. It could be the day when we learn of the historically biggest field of independents, including a former leader of the country, ever to put themselves forward as candidates to run against the established parties in two weeks’ time.

Paula Cox, Premier of Bermuda from October 2010 to December 2012, is an absolutely massive name to be thrown into the mix and she may be joined by among others Cheryl Packwood as the shift in opinion against the Westminster system of party politics gains traction.

Much of that is owing to the declining level of debate we have witnessed in the past 4½ years between the ruling One Bermuda Alliance and the opposition Progressive Labour Party. For every parliamentary session that has been productive, there have been as many as five or six others that have lowered the discourse in so vile a way as to make them meaningless, reflecting this age of societal decadence.

Few house speakers over the years will have been as taxed as Randy Horton was during his cycle “under the wig”, and it is with the country’s thanks that he speeds towards retirement from the almost non-stop vitriol in his chambers that will have done as much to accelerate the greying in his fulsome beard as did Father Time.

If our leaders are taken to resorting to name-calling, taunting and fighting in car parks — most, if not all, protected by parliamentary privilege — when they should be showing clearly and consistently why they are fit for a higher calling, what are we to envisage in our communities where it is to be appreciated that the traits of nobility and statesmanship should be spread thinner by comparison.

On November 6, 2015, The Royal Gazette changed its policy for writers of Letters to the Editor whereby they no longer were allowed to make public criticisms of those in political office while cowering behind a pseudonym. They may have created more of a sensation and attracted more eyeballs to our online site, but did little to quell the division that so splits our society — along racial and socioeconomic lines. If we are ever to become one people, that needs to stop and our role as a community newspaper has to be significant in ensuring that the buck stops with us.

Additionally, our job is to report the news and provide opinion without becoming the story for either the OBA or the PLP, or their assorted followers, to point the finger of blame in the direction of 2 Par-la-Ville Road with any sense of vindication.

We do not mind if they do so at the same time because then we will know for sure that we have done our jobs.

The most plausible reasons for writers using pseudonyms was that they were fearful of economic retribution, or worse. However, we have yet to see demonstrable proof that this has ever happened.

We are now beyond the stage of benefit of doubt, for this online community ranks high as being among the most vindictive, venomous and mean-spirited that can be found in the western hemisphere. Factor in an impending election, in particular one where the margins are expected to be razor-thin, and one can imagine how empowered the trolls may feel.

That ends now. Today.

From this day until the day after the election, all political stories will have comments closed. The challenge for the reader is then to read the news only and not try to create the news, shift the narrative or spread fake news.

Our responsibility will be to provide as much balance to the debate — and there will be plenty from both sides — so that the reader is well informed. Those of a mind to seek out or create something different, something partisan and polarising, are free to do so. But they will not use The Royal Gazette as a platform to launch their attacks.

In furtherance of this effort, political stories will not be shared to Facebook between today and July 19, and political stories published since Saturday will have comments closed today — ahead of their scheduled 72-hour timeframe.

Trolls being trolls, they are conditioned to get on to our website to spew their bile on any story that bears the slightest connection to which they have been barred from continuing comments.

To that, we say: “Go ahead, make my day.”

Permanent banning orders will be put in place for anyone who falls foul of what we wish to accomplish between July 4 and 19. And that is a site full of top-quality and informative journalism ahead of and during what is expected to be a most pivotal period in the electoral history of the island.

“Enough is Enough!”